translated from Spanish: Today, 153 years ago, the first football match was played in Argentina

Football and Argentina are closely related. Hundreds of players born in Argentina are idols in most clubs around the world. On the same date on which Flag Day is celebrated, the 153th year of the first football match played in Argentina is also celebrated.

It was held at the Buenos Aires Cricket Club, located in the Forests of Palermo and close to where today the Planetarium is located.The same match, was organized and played by English immigrants, who had brought the sport from their home country and considered it the most “accessible to the middle class and the people”. The meeting was broadcast by brothers Thomas and James Hogg through a notice published in the Buenos Aires Standard, an English-based newspaper published in the Argentine capital.

The Standard newspaper, which underwent several name changes in its nearly 100-year life.

The match was between reds and whites, with the first winning four against zero. But, as mentioned earlier, it was only played by the English. In 1882, one of the 500,000 Britons who landed on the Silver River at the beginning of the decade was Alejandro Watson Hutton, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh in humanities. Among his belongings, Hutton had brought balls and inflators, which he used to teach his pupils at St Andrew’s school in Olivos to teach them how to play football.

Alexander Watson Hutton.

Although the popularity of football, thanks to Hutton, increased, the relationship with the directors of Saint Andrew became increasingly strained, which caused it to be disenged and, in late 1898, to found the legendary club Alumni.Five years earlier, in February 1893, Hutton founded the Argentine Association Football League, which was responsible for laying the groundwork to organize the championship. At more than 153, and with The Argentine Association Football League converted into the Argentine Football Association, we remember the day on which the first football match in the country was played, the first match of that sport that Argentines love so much.

Original source in Spanish